You’ve shredded your documents and sent them off in our mobile shredding unit. You know they’re going to be recycled, but you might not know exactly what that means. How is paper made into recycled paper and other products?
The Pulping Process: New and Recycled Paper
Paper is made from trees. More specifically, it is made from the cellulose fibres in trees. When recycling paper, the first step is to dissolve the material. This creates pulp, which is then used to make recycled paper. What is pulp, exactly? It is the component elements of paper – the cellulose fibres.
Before office paper can be made into new paper, all of the ink must be removed. This is done by washing the paper in a tank that uses a large quantity of water to separate the ink from the paper fibres. This tank is called a pulper. Staples and other unwanted material are removed during this process, as well. Ink can also be removed by a process known as floatation. With this method, special chemicals are added to the pulper, which produces a froth. Air is blown in, and the ink sticks to the air bubbles and rises to the surface. A layer of foam forms, trapping the ink.
After the paper has been broken down into pulp, the fibres are separated, washed and screened to remove fibre bundles. Then, the water is pressed out. Once the pulp is dried, it can be made into recycled paper. To make white paper, the pulp is bleached. Some recycling centres make the paper directly, and others press the pulp into bales to be sent to paper mills around the world. There, it will be used as a raw material to create new paper.
Pulping Gives You Extra Security
Every piece of paper that Shred on Site shreds is pulped, as well. That means there will be no opportunity for your confidential documents to be reconstructed. They’ll be broken down into wood pulp, their ink removed, and then recycled into a variety of products. Talk about document destruction! After your shredded paper goes through the pulping process, the information that was once on the paper will be completely gone. There is no need to worry about one single character of your document showing up on an egg carton or in a ream of recycled paper.
Shred on Site is your one stop shop for secure document destruction. When we send your documents through our shredder, they are rendered unreadable. When they go through the pulping process, they are destroyed completely.
Looking to set up a regular shredding service? Call us today for a quote.
